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Today's Stories April 10, 2007 James G. Abourezk April 9, 2007 Saul Landau Uri Avnery Nicole Colson Gideon Levy Corporate Crime Reporter Evelyn Pringle Hill Kemp Martha Rosenberg Keith Rosenthal Jane Stillwater Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Sara Roy Arno J. Mayer Jeffrey St.
Clair Vicente Navarro Fidel Castro Fred Gardner Ralph Nader David N. Rahni Arthur Neslen Pratyush Chandra Missy Beattie Marc Levy Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
April 6, 2007 Franklin Lamb Gloria La Riva Corporate Crime Reporter Ron Jacobs Felice Pace Walter Brasch David Swanson Sylvia Syracuse
Patrick Cockburn Tom Barry Richard W. Behan Nicola Nasser Bernadine Dohrn Laray Polk Helen Redmond
April 4, 2007 Col. Dan Smith Joshua Frank Margaret Kimberly Sharon Smith Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon Martin Luther
King,Jr. Bill Quigley Dave Zirin Evelyn Pringle Peter Rost,
MD Website of the Day
April 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Marjorie Cohn Brian M. Downing Corporate Crime
Reporter Carol Norris Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Scott Bontz Thomas Dolby Website of
the Day
Gary Leupp Uri Avnery James Petras Norman Solomon Robert Fisk Stanley Heller Sherwood Ross Monica Benderman Stephen Fleischman Anne McElroy
Dachel Website of the Day
Cockburn /
St. Clair Fred Gardner Greg Moses Gary Leupp Robert Fisk Roger Morris Conn Hallinan Kristin J.
Anderson Jason Hribal John Ross Christopher Brauchli David Underhill Elizabeth Schulte Ben Terrall Missy Beattie Sonja Karkar Daniel Wolff David Vest Ron Jacobs Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
Alan Maass Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity Richard W. Behan Gabriel Kolko William S. Lind Stedjan / Weis Kevin Zeese David Busch Fidel Castro CounterPunch
News Service Website of the Day
Saul Landau Patrick Cockburn Dave Lindorff Arthur Neslen Michael Dickinson Ingmar Lee Aseem Shrivastava Marlene Martin Mahmoud El-Yousseph Michael Foley Website of the Day
March 28, 2007 Nicole Colson Harry Clark Larry Everest Jonathan M.
Feldman Dave Zirin Jane Stillwater Ayesha Ijaz Khan Jim Wilfong Hawra Karama Website of
the Day
Iain Boal /
Patrick Cockburn Monica Benderman Corporate Crime
Reporter Joshua Frank Harvey Wasserman Sen. Russell Feingold Tillman Family Patrick Bond David Judd Website of the Day
Patrick Cockburn Uri Avnery Greg Moses Bill Hatch John V. Walsh Diane Christian Dan La Botz Frederico Fuentes Sunsara Taylor Mickey Z. Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St.
Clair David Rosen Ron Jacobs Robert Fantina Alan Maass Atul Gawande Marianne McDonald China Hand Kaz Dziamka Andrew Wimmer Don Monkerud Anthony Papa Matthew Provonsha Missy Beattie Stephen Fleischman Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend Song of the Weekend
March 23, 2007 Saul Landau Patrick Cockburn Greg Moses Rep. Ron Paul Franklin Lamb Stephen Gowans Roger Burbach Dave Lindorff William S. Lind Alan Mammoser Russell Hoffman Website of
the Day
March 22, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Robin Blackburn Michael Donnelly Uzma Aslam
Khan Lee Sustar Robert D. Skeels Rev. William Alberts Anne McElroy
Dachel Mickey Z. Website of
the Day
Tao Ruspoli James Petras Fred Gardner Corporate Crime
Reporter Faisal Kutty Robert Fantina Isabella Kenfield and Roger
Burbach Lucinda Marshall Winslow Wheeler Website of
the Day
March 20, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Winslow T.
Wheeler Sharon Smith Uri Avnery Stan Cox Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Alan Farago Richard W.
Behan Juan Antonio Montecino Latin America Has Moved On David Krieger Peter Rost, MD Mickey Z. Website of
the Day Webclip of
the Day
March 19, 2007 Paul Craig
Roberts Patrick Cockburn Stauber / Rampton Werther Noam Chomsky Jeff Leys Richard May Ron Jacobs Mike Whitney Website of
the Day
March 17 / 18, 2007 Alexander Cockburn John Scagliotti Jeffrey St. Clair Paul Craig
Roberts Greg Moses Harry Clark Brian Cloughley Mehran Ghassemi William Loren Katz John Ross Ralph Nader Walter Brasch Samer Assad Dave Zirin Ron Jacobs Missy Beattie Don Santina Sami Adwan Dr. Susan Block Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
March 16, 2007 R. T. Naylor Paul Craig
Roberts Joshua Frank Diane Farsetta Tom Barry Stephen Lendman Al Krebs Jackie Corr Ramzy Baroud Reza Fiyouzat Website of the Day
March 15, 2007 Alison Weir Patrick Cockburn Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity Franklin Spinney Standard Schaefer Conn Hallinan Maureen Webb Sonja Karkar Margaret Kimberly Anthony Papa Katherine Hancy Wheeler Bush's Latin American Tour: Good Will Lost Video of the Day Website of
the Day
March 14, 2007 Tao Ruspoli Philip Agee Bruce Dixon John Walsh Sunsara Taylor William Johnson Richard Thieme Jeffrey Klein Nicola Nasser Dave Lindorff Website of
the Day
March 13, 2007 Catherine Wilkerson,
M.D. Jonathan Cook Robert Bryce Corporate Crime
Reporter Pierre Rimbert Dave Lindorff Elizabeth Schulte Norman Solomon Kevin Zeese Jeff Conant Website of the Day
March 12, 2007 Marjorie Cohn Col. Dan Smith Paul Craig Roberts Ingmar Lee Fred Gardner Ron Jacobs Ralph Nader John Ross Stephen Fleischman Eva Carazo Vargas Website of
the Day
March 9 / 11, 2007 Sameer Dossani Jeffrey St.
Clair Dave Marsh Patrick Cockburn Jennifer Van Bergen James P. Stevenson Arthur J. Versluis Corporate Crime
Reporter Missy Beattie Michael Simmons Kevin Zeese David Swanson John A. Murphy Dave Lindorff Nikolas Kozloff Christopher
Fons Mike Roselle Mike Mejia Susie Day Michael Donnelly Tao Ruspoli Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
March 8, 2007 Elaine Cassel Yifat Susskind Corporate Crime Reporter Col. Dan Smith William S. Lind Mark Engler Roger Burbach Dana Cloud Isabella Kenfield Lucinda Marshall Tao Ruspoli Website of
the Day
Christopher Ketcham Christopher
Ketcham Alexander Cockburn / Jeffrey
St. Clair Winslow T.
Wheeler Sean Donahue Dave Lindorff Evelyn Pringle Tao Ruspoli Website of the Day
March 6, 2007 Gary Leupp Uri Avnery Patrick Cockburn Saul Landau Corporate Crime Reporter Ron Jacobs Mike Roselle P. Sainath Joshua Frank Aniket Alam Dave Zirin Website of
the Day
March 5, 2007 Greg Moses Patrick Cockburn James Petras Frida Berrigan Marjorie Cohn Douglas Kammen
and S.W. Hayati Sen. Barack Obama Michael Young Dave Lindorff Sonja Karkar Website of the Day
March 3 / 4, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Corporate Crime
Reporter Jeffrey St. Clair Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader M. Shahid Alam Gilad Atzmon Fred Gardner George Ciccariello-Maher Rock &
Rap Confidential Gillian Russom Michael McPhearson Kevin Zeese Sunsara Taylor Wendy Thompson Kenneth Rexroth Missy Beattie Don Monkerud Tina Louise Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
March 2, 2007 Roger Morris Phil Gasper Mike Roselle Robert Bryce John V. Walsh Sherwood Ross China Hand David Rosen Chris Genovali Peter Harley Website of the Day
March 1, 2007 Laura Carlsen Paul Craig
Roberts Ray McGovern Christopher
Brauchli Najum Mustaq Brent Bowden Tina Richards Ethan Nadelman Mike Stark Wadner Pierre
/ Jeb Sprague Mike Whitney Website of
the Day
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April 10, 2007 Free Market Propaganda and a Showdown in KathmanduChina and the Fate of the TigerBy NIRMAL GHOSH Bangkok. Next week will see the first instalment of a showdown over the fate of what many would say is the very identity of Asia --the tiger. A meeting in Kathmandu beginning April 16, will see many of the world's top conservationists and wildlife trade specialists discussing China's new and unusually persistent effort to open up the trade in tiger parts. China is sending a delegation as well. For tigers this is a crisis. China's government is close to lifting the 1993 ban on the trade essentially to appease a handful of influential businessmen who have been breeding tigers in ''farms'' regardless of the ban and now find themselves saddled with thousands of animals. Ahead of the Kathmandu meeting, there is talk that Thailand--which has its own vested interests in controversial ''tiger farms'' --may quietly support China's effort to open up the trade. After a group of conservationists visited China last month and for the first time publicly disagreed with a handful of economists who have been supporting Beijing, several of China's tiger farmers came out in the open with a press conference demanding that the ban be lifted. China's other argument is that millions stand to gain from the medicinal properties of tiger bone. The public is clamouring for tiger products, says the Chinese government. This comes despite a significant proportion of Chinese traditional medicine practitioners moving away from prescribing tiger bone. Tests in China itself, have proven that tiger bone is not much different to the bones of pigs, dogs or goats--and is almost identical in composition to a high altitude rodent found in plenty in China. The appeal of the tiger, clearly, is in the imagination. Opening up the trade again would be a total disaster and drive the species rapidly to extinction. The trade in endangered wildlife is ranked third after arms and drugs. It is run by powerful international criminal syndicates. Thailand is one of the centres of the trade--both as a source for species and as a conduit; almost every other month shipments of endangered species bound for China, are detected and seized in Thailand as they pass through from Malaysia and other countries. That tiger parts from wild tigers killed for a handful of Baht or Ringgit or Rupees in the wild, will be laundered through the legalised supplies in China is a foregone conclusion. China's 1993 ban was crucial in ensuring tigers still exist in the wild today, albeit in very small numbers. It is estimated that there are possibly a little over 5,000 tigers left today in the forests of Asia. Most are in India which possibly has close to 2,000. Thailand has around 400. China has been lobbying international opinion to get the ban lifted. Securing the approval of key tiger range countries like India, Russia, Thailand, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and Malaysia, is important to China. But in all these countries the tiger is clinging to the edge of extinction. India's populations are small and isolated. Indian tiger expert Valmik Thapar estimates that of India's 30 tiger reserves, at least five may have no tigers at all. A sixth is proven to have none left; they were all wiped out by poachers in 2004. Over the past 2 months, 13 Asiatic lions have been killed by poachers in their last refuge in India's Gir National Park. The poachers, caught this week, said they were sending lion parts to China, where they would be passed off as tiger parts. China has secured the support of a New Delhi-based economist, Barun Mitra, who has visited China on invitation from state agencies several times, and written extensively in the mainstream media in support of China's position. Mitra founded and runs the Liberty Institute, a New Delhi-based think tank inspired by the work of, principally, the late Julian Simon. Simon was famous for his faith in free markets and his scepticism of the environmental movement. In 1984 he wrote ''There is no statistical evidence for rapid loss of species in the next two decades.'' In the same year he wrote ''The climate does not show signs of unusual and threatening changes." Despite being proven spectacularly wrong on many such assumptions (though right on some others), Simon's belief in free markets as the ultimate regulator lives on in some quarters. The website LobbyWatch.org which tracks ''deceptive public relations involving lobbyists, PR firms, front groups, political networks and industry-friendly scientists'' notes that ''The Liberty Institute and Mitra.. put a Third World face on a pro-corporate agenda and.. denigrate and discredit civil society movements in the Third World who challenge corporate interests.'' Mitra's argument is seductive : opening up the trade in tiger parts will flood the market, bringing down prices and hence reducing the incentive for poachers to kill wild tigers. But in his most recent trip to China, Mitra ran into opposition. For the first time, three conservationists--two Indians and one Singaporean--were also invited by China and publicly opposed him, adding fuel to an already bitter debate. Conservationists and trade experts believe opening up the trade even in a limited experiment, will only stimulate demand in a market where years of effort at curbing it have to some extent worked. In their statement in Beijing the conservationists--chief scientist of World Wildlife Fund India Dr A.J.T. Johnsingh, and co-founders of the north India-based Corbett Foundation, Dilip and Rina Khatau--said opening up the trade was not really intended to save the species but ''to satisfy demand, appease consumers and create viability for vested human interests, mainly of tiger farms.'' Opening up the trade would
benefit individuals like Zhou Weisheng, owner of the Guilin Xiongsen
Bear and Tiger Farm, which has over 1,000 tigers mainly because
the farm continued breeding them after the 1993 ban. But China says they must be paid compensation, and if tiger range countries do not want the ban on tiger parts lifted, it is they should pay the farmers. Millions of Dollars are raised worldwide to conserve the tiger, but China gets no credit, some Chinese officials say. But tiger parts and products are already surreptitiously and sometimes quite openly traded out of these farms. Reports of tiger products from some of the farms, made headlines in China last year and elicited a reassurance from a top official, Cao Qingyao of the State Forestry Administration, who told the news agency Xinhua in January this year that China was very concerned about the situation of wild tigers worldwide and would continue to work with the international community to save the species. "A number of international organizations and experts have questioned China's wild tiger protection policies," Cao said. "The government attaches great importance to their queries. A worldwide policy study on how to effectively protect wild tigers and help them multiply is underway." Mitra insists that farming
endangered species is the key to their survival. Mitra himself cites one example--of crocodiles. But China director of TRAFFIC Xu Hongfa, points out that crocodiles are far cheaper to breed than tigers so their example provides no parallel. Besides, say conservationists, breeding crocodiles has not helped the species in the wild. Thailand breeds crocodiles but the Siamese crocodile remains endangered. Says Kuala Lumpur based Chris Shepherd of TRAFFIC, an organization that tracks and studies the illegal trade in wildlife : ''A domestic supply (of cattle) hasn't stopped the poaching of (indigenous south east Asian wild species like) banteng and kouprey.'' Likewise, a supply of farmed pork, does not stop hunters from going after wild boar. Dr Ullas Karanth of the New-York
based Wildlife Conservation Society--one of the world's foremost
experts on tigers--provides some perspective. Over the last 300 years, tiger
range has shrunk by 93 per cent. ''Even if demand is suppressed,
tigers will disappear in many area'' says Dr Karanth. His Thai colleague who works
on tiger conservation in Thailand, Dr Anak Pattanavibool, agrees
that lifting the ban in China would have an impact on wild tigers,
and undermine Thailand's efforts to protect tigers in the wild.
Enforcement of wildlife laws in China is lax, and this will extend to the tiger farms rendering any system of monitoring ineffective, he says. In the event the ban on trading in tiger parts is lifted, laundering of wild animals through legal channels will be a certainty. Farmed tigers will always be more expensive than poached ones, doing little to dampen the profitability of poaching. In the course of a 75-page report on China's tiger market written for TRAFFIC by Xu Ling and Kristin Nowell and released last month, the authors write ''TRAFFIC's findings provide strong evidence that China's trade ban has been effective at reducing the market for tiger products, particularly traditional medicines. Still, illegal trade remains a threat.'' ''Business people in China who stand to profit from tiger trade are encouraging demand for tiger products. And the government of China has been petitioned to ease its trade ban by allowing domestic trade in medicines made from captive-bred tigers.'' ''Lifting the ban or weakening China's policy by exempting products derived from captive-bred tigers would be dangerous, heightening the possibility that tigers will someday become extinct in the wild.'' Kathmandu will be a turning point for the species, which means--or at least should mean --much more to Asia ecologically, aesthetically and spiritually than simply something to eat. Notes Belinda Wright, executive director of New Delhi-based NGO Wildlife Protection Society of India : ''The strength of this entire battle will largely depend on the stand of the (tiger) range states.'' Nirmal Ghosh, a journalist and conservationist based in Bangkok, is the Thailand Correspondent of The Straits Times. He is also a Trustee of conservation NGO The Corbett Foundation in India, runs the website http://www.indianjungles.com and has been studying and writing on wildlife issues for 20 years. He can be emailed at tigerfire@yahoo.com
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The Gang's All Here: Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Jeffrey Goldberg, Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly...End Times Leaves No Reputation Unstained!  Buy End Times Now! CounterPunch Books! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal  Click Here to Order!  Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair           The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn           CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed        Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh                   |
